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City seeks to cancel $500K Pride Center of Maryland grant over reporting issues

Loss of funds would impact a variety of programs

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Cleo Manago, director of the Pride Center of Maryland, sits for a portrait outside of the Pride Center’s new location. (Photo by Ulysses Muñoz of the Baltimore Banner)

BY JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV AND ADAM WILLIS | A city agency managing tens of millions in pandemic relief money has recommended terminating a $500,000 grant to the state’s largest nonprofit organization dedicated to providing resources to the LGBTQ community, Pride Center of Maryland.

The grant, which would affect programming to address violence within the LGBTQ community, helps the center provide resources to hundreds of people, according to its executive director, Cleo Manago.

The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.

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The fight to save one of Baltimore’s last gay bars

Leon’s closed in July after its owner’s death

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Leon’s opened in Mount Vernon in the 1950s and bore witness to many eras of the city’s evolving queer culture. From left, Leon’s staffers Stacey Antoine, Karen O’Donnell, Joseph Leloudis, Damon Wallace, Brandon Gruszczynski, Tina Wallace, Sanchez Sanders, Cade Granger, Adam David Bencomo, and Sam Smith. (Photo by Kaitlin Newman for the Baltimore Banner)

By JULIE SCHARPER and WESLEY CASE | Soon after Jim Becker came out as gay in 1967, he ducked into a Mount Vernon bar called Leon’s.

In the dark, smoky bar, men used pseudonyms for fear of being outed, as homosexual acts were illegal in Maryland. Bartenders, wary of vice squad raids, would blow a whistle if couples leaned in for a kiss.

But to Becker, arriving at Leon’s was a kind of homecoming. He could explore his identity, connect with other gay men and build community in the anxious years before the 1969 Stonewall uprising, a pivotal moment in the LGBTQ rights movement.

The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.

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Baltimore

The government pressured USA Rugby to ban transgender women. A Baltimore team refused to comply.

Ferals is a women’s-plus team within the Flamingos

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Harper Ockert runs drills with teammates at Utz Field in Patterson Park during rugby practice with her team, the Ferals. (Photo by Jessica Gallagher of the Baltimore Banner)

By KYLE GOON | It was midmorning, and the March winds lashed against the faces of the players on the Ferals rugby team as they suited up at a park in Frederick. The turf was frozen.

Harper Ockert, 24, wrapped her left knee with tape, stabilizing her joint for the jarring hits to come. She had struggled to sleep the night before, but her anxiety was not strictly about the game.

She and her teammates were preparing to defy newly enacted rules set by the sport’s governing body. A nervous energy thrummed in her chest as she considered what her defiance meant.

Ockert is a transgender woman who plays for the Ferals — the women’s-plus team within the Baltimore Flamingos rugby club. Three of her teammates are trans women, too. They had played games for the Ferals before, but this match at Walnut Ridge Park was the team’s first since USA Rugby had shifted its policy to allow only people assigned female at birth to play women’s rugby.

The rest of this article can be found on the Baltimore Banner’s website.

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Baltimore

Popular Mount Vernon gay bar Leon’s to temporarily close after owner’s death

Ron Singer passed away on July 7

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Leon’s Backroom Bar in Mount Vernon. (Photo by Jessica Gallagher for the Baltimore Banner)

By WESLEY CASE | Leon’s Backroom, Baltimore’s oldest gay bar, temporarily shut down after service on Wednesday night, according to a post on the business’s Instagram page.

The announcement comes a little more than a week after the death of the Mount Vernon bar’s owner, Ron Singer, who died at 66 on July 7.

The rest of this article can be found on the Baltimore Banner’s website.

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